192 WAR ABOUT OREGON, [CHAP. XIV. 



As we passed Burlington, a fellow passenger told us that in an 

 Episcopalian college established there, called St. Mary s Hall, were 

 a hundred young girls, whom he called &quot; the holy innocents,&quot; as 

 sembled from every part of the Union. Eighteen of them had. 

 in September last, taken their degrees in arts, receiving, from the 

 hands of the Bishop of New Jersey, diplomas, headed by an en 

 graving of the Holy Virgin and Child, and issued &quot; in the name 

 of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.&quot; The session had ended 

 with the ceremony of laying and consecrating the corner-stone of 

 &quot;the chapel of the Holy Innocents for the use of the scholars of 

 St. Mary s Hall.&quot; 



Whether we took up a newspaper, or listened to conversation 

 in the cars, we found that the Oregon question, and a rupture 

 with England, were the all-engrossing topic of political specula 

 tion. The democratic party are evidently intoxicated with their 

 success in having achieved the annexation of Texas, and are bent 

 on future schemes of territorial aggrandizement. Some talk of 

 gaining the whole of Oregon, others all Mexico. I heard one 

 fellow-traveler say modestly, &quot; We are going on too fast ; but 

 Mexico must in time be ours.&quot; On arriving at Philadelphia. I 

 found some of the daily journals written in a tone well-fitted to 

 create a war-panic, counting on the aid of France in the event 

 of a struggle with Great Britain ; boasting that if all the eastern 

 cities were laid in ashes by an English fleet, they would rebuild 

 them in five years, and extinguish all the debts caused by the 

 war in thirty years ; whereas England, borrowing as in the last 

 war many hundred millions sterling, must become bankrupt or 

 permanently crippled with taxation. I asked an acquaintance, 

 whether the editor of such articles secretly wished for war, or 

 wanted to frighten his readers into a pacific policy. &quot; He has 

 lately gone over,&quot; said he, &quot; to the protectionist party. Having 

 made large purchases of shares in an iron company, and fearing 

 that, should peace continue, the free-traders would lower the 

 tariff, he patriotically hopes for a war with England to enable 

 him to make a fortune. He is one of those philanthropic monop 

 olists who would have joined in a toast given some years ago at 

 a public dinner by one of our merchants, &amp;lt; May the wants of all 



